negroes were deceived thereby, himself among the number had shown them sympathy, and had in consequence been unmercifully beaten therefor.  This time he wanted to be certain before committing himself; so I told him to go out on the porch, from which he could see the whole horizon lit up with camp-fires, and he could then judge whether he had ever seen any thing like it before.  The old man became convinced that the “Yankees” had come at last, about whom he had been dreaming all his life; and some of the staff officers gave him a strong drink of whiskey, which set his tongue going.  Lieutenant Spelling, who commanded my escort, was a Georgian, and recognized in this old negro a favorite slave of his uncle, who resided about six miles off; but the old slave did not at first recognize his young master in our uniform.  One of my staff-officers asked him what had become of his young master, George.  He did not know, only that he had gone off to the war, and he supposed him killed, as a matter of course.  His attention was then drawn to Spelling’s face, when he fell on his knees and thanked God that he had found his young master alive and along with the Yankees.  Spelling inquired all about his uncle and the family, asked my permission to go and pay his uncle a visit, which I granted, of course, and the next morning he described to me his visit.  The uncle was not cordial, by any means, to find his nephew in the ranks of the host that was desolating the land, and Spelling came back, having exchanged his tired horse for a fresher one out of his uncle’s stables, explaining that surely some of the “bummers” would have got the horse had he not.

The next morning, November 23d, we rode into Milledgeville, the capital of the State, whither the Twentieth Corps had preceded us; and during that day the left wing was all united, in and around Milledgeville.  From the inhabitants we learned that some of Kilpatrick’s cavalry had preceded us by a couple of days, and that all of the right wing was at and near Gordon, twelve miles off, viz., the place where the branch railroad came to Milledgeville from the Mason & Savannah road.  The first stage of the journey was, therefore, complete, and absolutely successful.

General Howard soon reported by letter the operations of his right wing, which, on leaving Atlanta, had substantially followed the two roads toward Mason, by Jonesboro’ and McDonough, and reached the Ocmulgee at Planters’ Factory, which they crossed, by the aid of the pontoon-train, during the 18th and 19th of November.  Thence, with the Seventeenth Corps (General Blair’s) he (General Howard) had marched via Monticello toward Gordon, having dispatched Kilpatrick’s cavalry, supported by the Fifteenth Corps (Osterhaus’s), to feign on Mason.  Kilpatrick met the enemy’s cavalry about four miles out of Mason, and drove them rapidly back into the bridge-defenses held by infantry.  Kilpatrick charged these, got inside the parapet, but could not